Criminal charges may not be possible in Melissa Highsmith abduction, Fort Worth police say

Fort Worth police say it might not be possible to charge anyone in the disappearance of Melissa Highsmith, whose family believes they have found her close to home 51 years after she was kidnapped.

The family announced on Sunday that DNA testing and the help of an amateur genealogist led them to a Fort Worth woman who went by Melanie and they were reunited with her over the weekend.

Melissa Highsmith was 22 months old when her mother reported she was abducted by a babysitter in 1971. She has lived in Fort Worth most of her life and never knew she had been kidnapped, the family wrote in posts on a Facebook page called “WE FOUND MELISSA!!!”

The Vanished Podcast, which interviewed the family for a two-episode series that aired this month, connected them with Lisa Jo Schiele, who helped the family interpret DNA results from genealogy website 23andme, according to a post on the podcast’s Facebook page.

In a statement Monday, the Fort Worth Police Department said it’s “overjoyed to hear about how the Highsmiths’ use of 23andme led them to Melissa. The Fort Worth Police Department will be conducting official DNA testing to confirm Melissa’s identity, and the department will provide an update once the official results have come in.

“The FWPD Major Case Unit will be working with the Highsmith family to continue the investigation into Melissa’s disappearance,” the police department said. “Even though the criminal statute of limitations expired 20 years after Melissa’s 18th birthday, the Fort Worth Police Department is committed to completing this investigation to uncover all of the available information concerning Melissa’s abduction that occurred 51 years ago.”

Generally, under Texas state law the statute of limitations on a kidnapping charge is five years. The statute of limitations that expires 20 years after a victim’s 18th birthday is for a charge of aggravated kidnapping.

Melanie, who said she plans on changing her name back to Melissa, told WFAA-TV that she had thought the woman who raised her was her mother and that she didn’t have a happy childhood.

“I didn’t feel loved as a child,” she told WFAA. “It was abusive, and I ran away at 15 years old. I went to the streets. I did what I had to do to get by ... I worked the streets.”

The family wrote in a Facebook post that they had conducted “further official and legal DNA testing” and were “waiting for official confirmation for the naysayers in this world.”